Bioreactors are useful for generating and supporting biological reactions for any number of purposes. Biological reactions can be susceptible to changes in temperature and/or pressure. Moreover, as the biological reaction progresses, the reaction itself may change various parameters within the bioreaction vessel, such as dissolved oxygen content and/or pH. Accordingly, it may be important to monitor a number of variables of the biological reaction.
The life sciences industry is moving from large, capital-intensive facilities made of stainless steel with large clean-in-place (CIP) infrastructure to smaller facilities that use polymer bags or containers functioning as the bioreactors. The bioreactor bag is used once and then disposed. This single-use bioreactor technique significantly reduces the capital cost of the plant. For example, in existing facilities that use stainless steel CIP infrastructure, up to 90% of the cost of operating the facility may be due to the clean-in-place infrastructure, including very high end instrumentation designed to withstand a steam cleaning cycle. By moving to disposable, single-use, bioreactor bags, the CIP portion of the capital can be eliminated and the facility can be more flexible and much smaller, which, in turn, allows the production of smaller batches that are needed for more targeted drug therapies and other smaller-scale applications. Providing an instrumentation architecture that facilitates the use and adoption of disposable, single-use bioreaction techniques would be of significant benefit to the life sciences industry, as well as other industries and processes that generate such biological reactions.